#i dont know what she EXPECTED it to say

[avocado-frog]

how am i supposed to live laugh love under these conditions

tldr for tags my mom found an old journal of mine and read through it so i accidentally outed myself to her lols

[ender1821]

im a child of divorce

[ruporas]

studies from the finale

[warning-heckboop]

Bramble! Born a Mimicry Changeling long, long ago (back when that was still an acceptable practice), they've never actually left Earth to return to Fairy World, first due to their devotion to their twin, and later due to their bond with the earthly nature she'd grown so adapted to.

With a lack of proper training, their magic can be unstable, and weaker than might be expected of a fae of their age. Even if they were to return to Fairy World in the present, they would likely never meet the requirements of being a godparent, and so they choose to continue living on Earth where they can use their talents in ways they've grown used to. Generally peaceful, they can be quite spiteful towards individuals who damage the forest they watch over.

((Bramble's natural form is based on the designs and concepts of the lovely @bunnieswithknives, as well as much of his lore being based on their concepts as linked above. Please check them out!!!))

[moeblob]

Every single time I draw for an anime I think to myself "never again will I draw for an anime" and then I am proven wrong. So here, take my daughter Lulu.

[vigilskeep]

i need to wynnepost. somebody has to

[lollytea]

Huntlow situationship gives me such intense brain termites you don't get it

[rexscanonwife]

Concept sketch of my new JJBA self insert and her stand, BellaDonna (who will eventually be known as Madonna). Inspired by the song 'Like a Prayer' by...well, Madonna! @sapphire-heart-tippy

(lore dump under the cut, TW for mentions of animal injury and religious trauma)

My self insert (who will also go by Jane) grew up in a deeply religious family and tried to be a good jehovah's witness child that made her parents proud.

One day, she comes up with the power to heal various injuries and ailments, almost to the point of being able to revive the dead. She figures she's given this power by the lord himself and vows to do good with it, but when she's found using them to heal a bird that had been wounded by a cat, her mother falls into hysterics thinking that she MUST be possessed by the devil to have such abilities.

She's punished and shunned by her community while her mother prays for a cure and though she tries to repent her power doesn't seem to go away, so eventually her mother snaps and drags her into the wilderness and attempts to throw her to the bottom of an old well.

Her Stand, which had previously not manifested physically, appears then to cushion her fall and eventually she manages to pull herself out of the well with her Stand's help, who she now believes to be a guardian angel. But not wanting to return home, she runs away to face the world alone, growing jaded and bitter over time. She loses all of her faith, and the power to heal inverts itself, becoming a sort of poison. Something that LEECHES life, rather than heal it.

When she's an adult (my age irl so 25 I guess) she's made her way by becomes a bounty hunter/assassin using her Stand and eventually catches the attention of Dio. Who takes her in and explains to her what her Stand REALLY is, promising to teach her how to properly wield those powers if she agrees to serve him. She reluctantly takes his offer, but starts to see him as a familial figure, since no one else had ever tried to nurture or even accept her gift. Dio is the one who giver her Stand the name BellaDonna, after the deadly plant!

[cubbihue]

Yeah I kinda figured that you’re playing a narrator for the story and this narrator you know has some lines that clearly contradict stuff that we see in the asks, which makes us as readers wonder what else the narrator is wrong about. Good job btw! I like it :)

Me every time I post a new FOP update that borders on horror and hoping my followers understand that this series has been dark since the very beginning despite the cutesy artstyle and can apply proper reading comprehension to it.

[sophiethewitch1]

I just finished catching up to what we want

And like

That scene with Dick finding reader

(Them? Us?) In his room Absolutely

mortifying idk how she felt comfortable

enough to ask him for help after that.

I am curious to see what he thinks of it

all though 👀

She still called him through a mix of desperation, still there idol worship, general erratic unpredictable behaviour, and a subconscious wariness towards Tim who was really the only other option lmao. Also Dick immediately assumes this is all a very strange trauma response which like... He's right. That is what it is.

[pareidolla]

// tw abuse rant (nothing angry just moreso exasperated)

i'm going to admit that while i'm enthusiastic for the pristine cut, i'm also a little concerned canon will politely dismiss the tower's abusive elements, and if that happens then i might?? scream????

[flareboi]

what if purple never calls him dad

[dirtytransmasc]

Yes, she decided. The moment she continued to go in his chamber, she could advice him to wed laena instead of trying to have a relationship with him, she could have remember him of his duty. She had a choice as everyone has

clearly logic is something that will not reach you no matter what I say but let's try again shall we.

first off, Viserys married for pleasure, not power or political gain. he knew his duties he knew what was best and had no interest. he married Alicent because that's what he wanted. it would be insanely inappropriate for a girl to advise a king on political matters AND it should not be the job of a 14 year old child to tell a king what he should be doing.

second off, she had a father to please, cause again, to reiterate, she was his daughter and she had a duty to him and her house. this was not a duty she wanted, but she didn't have a choice. she was young but se wasn't stupid she knew what her father expected of her, and if word got back from Viserys that she was actively advising him to marry someone else, she would then not only bring disobeying her father but going against him.

thirdly, and more minorly, "she should have pushed him to marry laena" isn't the gotcha you think it is. laena was even younger than her, and even if it was politically expected of him, still fucking gross.

lastly, cause I apparently can't stress this enough, SHE DIDNT HAVE A CHOICE, plain and simple. she had no agency, she had no power, she had no out, she was at the mercy of her father, she had to obey him, she had to do what he said, even if it meant walking herself to slaughter. once she met with the king, he took a liking to her and DEMANDED her presence, he the DEMANDED her hand. again, there was no point she could have said no. she couldn't say no to her father, she couldn't advise the king (he barely tolerated it when she was literally the queen, let alone if she had just been some girl entertaining him in his chambers), she couldn't deny the king of anything, she didn't have a choice.

she was 14 and scared, 14 and trying to survive, 14 and trying to please her father, 14 and sent to a man 3 times her age's chambers, 14 and lusted after by the king, 14 and knowing of her place in the world and what was expected of her. like every other woman in their history, she couldn't escape, she couldn't, there's no plainer way to say it. she faced her duty with poise and a stiff lip, cause that's what you had to do, but she was just a child.

you can't expect her to have been some radical icon, there were none, women who went against their station in life were punished or killed or put into god awful betrothals to lessen the shame brought to her family. she was a nobleman's daughter, she had a house to bring honor to. she did the heartbreaking thing of giving up, for the benefit of her father and house, doesn't mean she wanted it, doesn't mean it was ok, doesn't mean she isn't deserving of pity. giving in to your duty =/= wanting it.

"she had a choice as everyone has" she had a choice every woman has; accept it with grace, be forced into it, or damn herself to a fate much worse (and that's being generous, most didn't even have that many choices). it's the men who had choices, Otto offered his daughter up, he didn't have to, he had no obligation and nothing to lose if he didn't. Viserys had every choice, he could have married whoever he wanted, he could have denied her the second she entered his chambers. the men in her life had every choice to change her fate, yet they didn't take it, and you would rather blame her over them?

and listen, I know your set in your mindset of victim blaming a child bride who was raped until her husband didn't have the health or stamina to keep it up, and that you'll choose to blame her over the men in her life who damned her to such a fate. nothing I say will ever convince you, cause you clearly hate her past where logic will reach. you can keep sending asks with your terrible takes that have no backing or logic and actively ignore the political and societal state of the times and what it means for her as a young noble girl, and I'll keep answering them cause I have nothing better to do and I'll defend my girl to the grave.

[sonknuxadow]

you know i do wonder how many sonic characters actually have living parents. like knuckles is the last of his kind so obviously his parents arent around anymore. both guys who could be considered shadows dads are 100 percent confirmed dead. sonic is canonically an orphan im pretty sure. and on the other side of the coin cream is like the only character in the game cast who has a living parent we actually see onscreen. but what about everyone else i dont think theres a straight answer for any other character. other than rouge's mom being mentioned a couple times i Guess but we dont even know anything about her or if shes still alive just that she existed at some point. are these kids constantly putting themselves in danger because they dont have parents around to stop them or because their parents just dont care

[blood-choke]

hiiii… i wanted to ask more about this particular val scene where mc and her talk about that portrait and mc is a bit stuck on the word husband and wants val to know theyre not a man. can i ask what inspired that type of convo? i wanted to know if it’s something you’ll touch up on again? is this underlying feelings mc had before their entombment… worried that val sees them as a man just because mc is masc? cause i know that’s kind of broader discussion in the lesbian community iirc….. was that why you wanted to incorporate it? this ask has so many questions LOL but basically i wanted to say i was intrigued and it did made me think more on those type of dynamics (thinking back to those resources you rb’d a while ago that go more into depth about diff things in the lesbian community)

oh boy get ready for another long-winded answer from me!

a lot of the feelings mc has about their gender are inspired by Leslie Feinberg's work (mainly Stone Butch Blues)

Feinberg was someone who lived & passed as a man for years of hir life, and wrote a lot about the complexities of hir gender and what it was like being a "gender outlaw."

there was actually a scene in particular from sbb that kinda put the kernel of an idea in my mind that led to this narrative of the mc feeling overshadowed by Standard and anxious about being perceived as a man. it's towards the end of the book when Jess (sbb's protagonist) meets Ruth (a trans woman that Jess falls in love with)

Jess offers to help Ruth carry groceries up to her apartment, and Ruth takes this the wrong way & is offended, partly because she thinks Jess is a man.

One Saturday afternoon I found her clutching two huge bags of groceries and fumbling with the downstairs front-door lock. I pulled out my key.

“Here, let me.” She didn’t say thank you. She hurried ahead of me on the stairs.

“Can I help you carry those?” I offered.

“Do I look weak to you?” she asked.

I stopped on the stairs. “No. Where I come from it’s just a sign of respect, that’s all.”

She continued up the stairs. “Well, where I come from,” she called out, “men don’t reward women for pretending to be helpless.” Once I heard her apartment door close I kicked the stair in anger and frustration.

later, after they get to know each other better, they have this interaction:

I laughed and picked at my salad. “Do you know if I’m a man or a woman?”

“No,” Ruth said. “That’s why I know so much about you.”

I sighed. “Did you think I was a man when you first met me?" She nodded. "Yes. At first I thought you were a straight man. Then I thought you were gay. It’s been a shock for me to realize that even I make assumptions about sex and gender that aren’t true. I thought I was liberated from all of that.”

I smiled. “I didn’t want you to think I was a man. I wanted you to see how much more complicated I am. I wanted you to like what you saw.”

i think the inspiration here is quite obvious, hahaha. i figure anyone that's read sbb can sense the similar through-line here in my work. though the conversation between mc and Valentina has a much different tone.

there's another scene later as well after something happens to Jess and she has to have her jaw wired shut. she's working at a new job and is unable to speak, and she's also passing as a man at this job. she overhears some of her female coworkers talking about her and they refer to her as a "creep" and speculate that she's always watching one of them. Jess overhears all of this and then walks out of the job, goes home and pulls the wires out of her mouth herself:

After I was sure I’d gotten the last piece of wire out of my gums, I rinsed my mouth with whiskey and then drank the rest of it so I could sleep without remembering how Marija’s words had stripped me of my humanity.

butches & gnc women still face this kind of dehumanization; compared or likened to men in a derogatory way, accused of being "heteropatriarchal," the predatory stereotype of the fat ugly lesbian, and on the other side they're also hypersexualized, especially online and in queer spaces. butchphobia is a specific kind of misogyny that hits from all sides, even from the people that are supposed to be a part of your community. and this attitude especially effects trans women and women of color, who are already experiencing all of these things due to transmisogyny and racism.

i also really wanted to use this to touch on the kind of gender essentialism that we see in a lot of these cis feminist discussions - to these women at this job, Jess had committed no real crime other than being quiet and being the “wrong” kind of man. something about this scene has always stuck with me and really bothered me, but it's hard to put into words; on one hand i can admit i have probably been one of those women who made some kind of similar remark about a man i barely knew, but i've also been someone on the receiving end, too, because of the way i look. the mc in blood choke is put into this box, but they can't fit in, as someone who has been on both sides and doesn't really understand where they belong because of it; how can she stand beside Valentina or Hana or Clear when they might see her as a perpetrator, someone who can't be trusted? how does this mindset harm both the women and the men of the council and everyone in between? how can we break this cycle?

one of the films i mentioned recently when talking about the character designs was The Same Difference, which is specifically about the Black lesbian community and the discrimination within that community based upon gender roles (though this is not something limited to just the Black lesbian community)

a lot of the women in that doc talk about the boxes they're put in as AG or stud lesbians - they can't have their hair long, they can't wear makeup, they can't do this or that, they have to be aggressive and hard or else they're not real studs. they discuss stud on stud (or butch4butch) and how other lesbians look down on those types of lesbians, as well as the disdain for bisexual women for "betraying" the community. it explores the way misogyny and the patriarchy still oppress these women and forces them into this restrictive gender role despite their refusal to adhere to the other role originally assigned to them, and the way racism specifically intersects and exacerbates it for Black lesbians. there's a stud that's an exotic dancer and wears a weave, and a lot of other studs have a problem with this because a weave is "a female thing." another section follows a pregnant stud, and how the community shuns her for that, because she "dresses like a man and acts like a man" so why is she getting pregnant when she should be "the man"?

mc doesn't remember how they felt before entombment, but waking up they feel this need to prove themselves - both in that they are hard and aggressive like a butch should be, but also in that they want to be this person for Valentina or Clear or Hana (or all of them) that is safe and comforting. but they aren't sure how to do that when the world perceives them as this one specific thing - as a husband, as Standard, as a man, specifically this man who hurt Valentina.

of course we've already seen this to not be true of the companions with the last chapter as the mc learns more and spends more time with everyone. but this is kind of the foundation of where this whole idea came from. it started with my novel & i chose vampires for that story & this one because there is a long history of lesbian vampirism (and also because it's sexy) but there's this "curse" that both Hana & Valerie talk about in their respective stories, the first one being the racism she's had to face, the transphobia, along with this alienation and perception of lesbians as predatory and conniving and aggressive, as vampires, which i just think really lends itself to expanding upon these issues lesbians & trans women face both in general and within the community.

anyways if you want to read more i suggest Stone Butch Blues, which you can get for free on Leslie Feinberg's website, as well as S/he, by Minnie Bruce Pratt, available on the internet archive, Gender Failure by Ivan E. Coyote & Rae Spoon also on the internet archive, and you can rent The Same Difference for $10 on vimeo.

[suddenrundown]

currently repeating "you are under no obligation to be good at the things you do for fun" to myself over and over